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The Story of a Former Pastor Who Conquered Kickstarter and Created a 3D Printer Company

Like many who jumped early into 3D printing, Brook Drumm found the lower cost printers required a significant degree of assembly. Think Ikea, but with soldering guns, wires and less documentation. So he set out to build his own.

Brook Drumm always liked to create things.

But the former pastor turned web developer had spent the last few years in a profession where the product was on the screen – websites and iPhone apps – rather a physical product he could touch, and it was beginning to leave him a little unsatisfied.

So one day when he read about Jay Leno‘s efforts to produce exotic car parts using 3D printing technology, something clicked. After all, Drumm was a car nut himself, a self-described “maker” who liked to tinker and create in his garage. He thought if Leno could do it with equipment that may cost hundreds of thousands of dollars, in today’s world of rapid technology evolution, it wouldn’t be long before the technology came to him.

And it soon did. Before long Drumm read a story about Makerbot, a startup based in New York making affordable 3D printing machines, and within months he had saved up enough money to buy his own 3D printer.

Eventually he bought the Cupcake, an early model from Makerbot and assembled it with his family, including his six-year old child who he taught to solder during the assembly process.

“I thought if this was going to be in every home, kids have to be involved.”

But it left him a little unsatisfied, mainly because of how difficult he found it to put it together. Like many who have jumped early into 3D printing, they found the lower cost printers required a significant degree of assembly.

Think Ikea, but with soldering guns, wires and less documentation.

“It was hard, it was very technical. It took weekends of six, eight hour stints trying to figure out the documentation. We got it built. and I decided this was too hard and there was definitely room for someone to make this simpler.”

And so he set out to do just that, design and create his own 3D printer. When he started researching online, he found out about RepRap, an open-source project for 3D printing, which provided the foundation to at least start creating a 3D printer, not only because of the open-source instructions but also because of a community of enthusiastic tinkerers like himself.

The only problem for Drumm when he posted his interest in creating a RepRap meetup? There was no one within 50 miles of his home of Sacramento in this early enthusiast community who he could get together with.

“It was a fairly small community at the time, and even smaller when you try to find someone local.”

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